


A Note:

by redreys



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, F/M, Gen, M/M, Missing Scenes, Poetry, and i wanted to write them down, but they are silly in that one scene. and i love them for it, i mean there's no poetry inside of the fic but its based off of a poem so take that as you will, love and tenderness are the meaning of life.jpg, overall i feel like this is very melancholic, the entire point is that there are some moments in jons lives that were very much worth living, there are some ocs? there's a scene with jon and georgie's uni friends and everyone is very silly, timsasha if you see it like that but its up to interpretation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23368729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redreys/pseuds/redreys
Summary: "Life— is the only way / to get covered in leaves, / catch your breath on the sand, / rise on wings; / to be a dog, / or stroke its warm fur; / to tell pain / from everything it's not; / to squeeze inside events, / dawdle in views, / to seek the least of all possible mistakes. / An extraordinary chance / to remember for a moment / a conversation held / with the lamp switched off; / and if only once / to stumble upon a stone, / end up soaked in one downpour or another, / mislay your keys in the grass; / and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; / and to keep on not knowing / something important.”_________A collection of moments from Jon's life. All worth living.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Jonathan Sims, Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James & Jonathan Sims, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Comments: 30
Kudos: 77





	A Note:

**Author's Note:**

> This story revolves around the poem I put in the summary (it's by Wisława Szymborska, my favorite poet, and the title is not "A Note:" but "A Note". I don't know why I changed it but I like the way it looked in the layout).  
> I had already written a short, impulsive fic that featured this poem just right after I finished listening to s4, but then I thought about it and realized I wanted to expand the concept.  
> This is still a bit of a gamble. I don't know if it works how I wanted it to, but my goal was simply to write something I could reread after s5, and that would still make me happy, and, in a way, comfort me, despite being canon-compliant. And that I think I have done, so that's good.
> 
> There's a beautiful book, one of my favorites, that follows the life of two people who grew up together. The ending is terrible, but the very last chapter is set in their childhood, and it is /so/ very hopeful. I always thought it was genius, to place it there. I think that, too, inspired me to write this. 
> 
> cw for alcohol in the eleventh scene (no one is drunk, but Jon Sasha and Tim are all kind of tipsy), and Jon smokes a cigarette in the third.  
> (oh, and: not a native speaker and no beta)

There’s a leaf oh his desk.

It is plain, and ordinary, and Jon likes it.

Autumn leaves have a way of being gracious in spite of their frailty, looking elegant and feeling solid at the touch even when we know how easy it would be to turn them into crumbles.

We forget: that’s the thing. We forget. We know how fragile they are, and we don’t care.

There’s a lot of them, usually.

It’s rare that we make the effort to tell them apart. They are just leaves. We step on them because we like the noise, and we jump and we time our walking speed into a rhythm that matters to none but us, and we forget. _Fleeting, ephemeral, weak_. It means nothing, they are just leaves. It means nothing _because_ they are leaves, and as such they are worth our attention.

The ones we choose and never name are ours as long as we look.

We can hold them all at once, enclose them in our vision and leave out nothing— we can’t do that with, say- sunsets. Sunsets don’t end, they are cut off by the same horizon that enables their existence. We can’t see it all, and maybe that’s part of their beauty, but Jon likes leaves better.

Leaves have clean-cut edges, we can tell where they end and how and why, and yet we don’t know everything about them just because we can _see_. You can’t dig into them, can’t cut them open with the naked eye. Their complexity is contained and invisible, and we have to actively think about it if we want to acknowledge it. 

_But Jon, you pretentious idiot_ , _the same is true with sunsets._

Mh. Maybe Georgie was right, the same _is_ true with sunsets. But that isn’t the point, is it?

There’s a leaf on Jon’s desk, and beside it a pile of unfinished research.

Jon reaches out with his left hand, uncertain on where to land it, until Tim (Sasha’s friend, neat calligraphy and outgoing attitude, works three desks over) walks right beside him and abruptly stops to pick up the leaf. Jon is only mildly annoyed.

Tim is wearing three rings, and the metal clashes with the edges of the leaf. It doesn’t make a noise, as it isn’t supposed to, but the red looks nice against the silver of the rings. He is smiling.

“What’s this?” Tim asks, and Jon sighs.

“My liver,” he replies, deadpan, and the other man laughs, taken by surprise.

“Alright, alright. Sorry for the silly question, _Jonathan_.”

“Mh,” Jon mumbles, a bit deflated, unsure of what to say next, waiting for Tim to leave until it becomes apparent that he is simply not going to.

“Why is your _liver_ here, then?” he asks, instead, and Jon sighs.

“I don’t know, I just picked it up.”

“You just- randomly picked up a leaf and brought it all the way to your desk?”

“Why else do people pick up leaves?”

“Well,” he starts, and then briefly turns around to grab the closest chair he can find (turns out it’s pretty close; it’s Saturday morning, and it’s early— a lot of people have something better to do on days like these) and then sits down right in front of Jon. “Funny story-“

“ _Tim_ -”

“ _Funny_ story,” he repeats, with more verve, and Jon gives up, sits back into his chair and gestures him to go on. It might be quicker to just let him talk.

The story Tim tells him is- weird, unimportant and useless, but Jon finds himself listening. It’s about a neighbour he had as a child, an old man who apparently got out of his house exclusively to collect leaves. Tim talks about the way this man moved, the color of the leaves he collected and the estranged looks he would give to those that asked him _why_ and _what are you doing?_ and _how is it today, Tom?_

Jon tries to picture this _Tom_ , but he can’t come up with much. Too many pieces of data are missing, and what he ends up with is a dim figure, probably molded over the shadow of someone he already knows but can’t quite place.

Eventually, he is looking at Tim more than he is listening to his voice.

There’s a grand emotional climax to his tale, something about the man bringing a big grey pipe out of his window in the middle of winter ( _it was cold, snow everywhere, nobody was even outside_ ) and all of his leaves falling from the pipe out into the sky and down to the white of the grass.

Tim helps him see it. Describes to him all of the colours, tells him about the road and the small, poorly tended garden ( _though the snow covered everything, so you wouldn’t have noticed the state of the place_ ) until eventually he finishes his story with what Jon thinks is a sloppy ending: _and then he moved and we never saw him again_.

_Really, Tim_ , he thinks, unimpressed, _after all of this, you end it with “and we never saw him again”?_

“Mh,” Jon says. “The ending could do a rewrite.”

Tim frowns. “Jon. I did not make this up.”

“Like I believe you,” Jon replies, quick and dry, and then looks down, picks up a random notebook and starts flicking through it.

Of all things, Tim laughs. He has a warm laugh, one that usually puts people at ease (well, “people”— Jon has not exactly ran a poll, although he assumes what is true for him must be true for everyone else, too; nobody seems to have much of a problem with Tim).

“Fine, fine. Keep your distrust, Sims. But do know that your word is dimmer because of it.”

Jon smiles. “Perhaps,” he adds, ostensibly skeptic, but somehow Tim still seems satisfied. After all, it’s hard to steal a smile from Jonathan Sims, and Tim is the running winner alongside Sasha— that in itself is pretty impressive.

But there’s something more here. Some kind of personal goal, Jon suspects.

He just- Tim just doesn’t look like someone who easily gives up on people. At the very least, in spite of all the resistance, he has yet to give up on him.

And so Jon wonders, confused and a bit scared, if Tim ever gets tired of talking him into life.

Today, maybe to try and say thank you, maybe to prove a point, maybe because he needs it, Jon doesn’t want to let the joy flee from his lips.

So he keeps it there, lingering inside his veins, rushing into his lungs even when Tim leaves— down into the small bathroom, then back to his chair.

Jon is glad that Tim is there.

The thought is trivial and unimportant, it’s fleeting and ephemeral, and for a while it exists.

There’s a leaf on Jon’s desk and it won’t be there in a month.

In the meantime, the leaf is red.

* * *

This, whatever “this” is, if it even can be anything, is a beach much in the same way that it isn’t.

It almost feels like walking on a cloud, but it’s disorienting rather than soothing. Jon can hear the waves, but there’s no sea, not really. The shoreline never ends, it just keeps going, blending with the water somewhere in the midst of the fog. He can’t even see the horizon, and for a moment, on instinct and panic, he stops to look back at Martin.

Almost instantly, he thinks of Eurydice and Orpheus— he thinks of tragedies and wonders why we keep reading, why we endure stories that are doomed from the very beginning.

Orpheus must have known- he must have seen, must have heard it in the cadence of the gods’ voices. Must have predicted it, must have felt it even as he kept singing. Must have been floored by the terror even as the beauty of his own music filled his lungs.

Must have known, even before looking, that she was never coming back, that she was never coming out of it.

Perhaps it was smarter, to end it before it could begin, but Jon never was smart.

Never cared for that sort of thing. Not at his core, not deep into his heart.

And so when he turns around, and Martin is still there, he is not surprised.

 _Of course_ Martin is still there, relentless under his gaze, alive despite all evidence, breathing deeply and desperately and without shame.

Jon smiles.

_I love you_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud because he knows he’ll get to.

It hasn’t ended yet. It hasn’t ended yet.

* * *

The building is _really_ tall. Not ridiculously tall, this is just a balcony of a mutual friend— there are people inside, talking about something meaningless, and Jon is simply trying to smoke a cigarette. Still, he isn’t exactly thrilled.

On the plus side, Georgie is making fun of him.

“It isn’t that tall. Heights don’t bother you, why are you making that face?”

“The whole balcony looks unsafe.”

She laughs— that full, light laugh of hers, the one that Jon really likes because it is usually reserved not for things that she genuinely finds funny, but for those she thinks are sort of cute— and he tries and fails to fight back a smile.

  
“It is not unsafe,” she says.

“Mh. You can’t know that.”

Georgie sighs and gets up from the small chair. She hugs Jon from behind and rests her chin on his shoulder. “I can make an educated guess,” she says, and he makes no effort pretending he can fake any kind of annoyance at that. Instead, he leans back, and lets her gently move the both of them, swinging slowly, their feet pressed into the hovering ground.

After a bit of silence, Jon extends the arm that isn’t holding the cigarette, and, weakly, without any kind of tone whatsoever, whispers: “I’m flying, Jack.”

Georgie bursts out laughing, and here it is, Jon’s other favorite laugh— endeared, because this is actually funny, but with a side of _it’s probably funny because you are the one saying that._

“ _I_ am Jack?”

“Of course you are Jack,” he says, instantly, and again she laughs.

“Well, I can’t paint.”

“I’m glad to hear. I would not let you paint my naked body.”

“That’s a pity. I am sure you would look great.”

Jon rolls his eyes even though she can’t see, and holds her just a little tighter.

They are going to an art gallery tomorrow. There is a small drawing tucked into Jon’s jacket— it’s ugly and imprecise; it depicts a stick figure with a crossed expression and terrible hair: “you”, it says.

They are going to an art gallery tomorrow, and they won’t much like it. Neither of them will care to articulate their feelings on the matter, because it will rain and they will be too preoccupied with fitting under one broken umbrella (yellow and Georgie’s) and finding a decent bar to take shelter in.

The bar they eventually choose looks a bit empty but the coffee is just right. Jon eats a donut and Georgie stares at him with such joy in her eyes that he doesn’t even bother trying to guess the why.

Jon remembers about the drawing (“you”, it says) and takes it out of his pocket. _Look, I kept it._

In just about ten months, they are going to be arguing each day, for hours on end, and almost a year from now they will no longer be a couple.

The wind pushes the grey away from Georgie’s face, and tomorrow they are going to an art gallery. Jon is smoking his cigarette.

“Are you still flying?” Georgie asks, out of the blue, and there’s a train of thought behind her words that Jon can’t quite catch. The question comes out quiet, as thought it didn’t quite make sense in her mind either, but she still wanted to say it.

“Sure,” Jon replies, easy, and Georgie smiles into his skin.

* * *

Jon is twelve years old, sleeping on a mattress he didn’t get to choose, buried under the duvets, looking for a comfort he won’t get, and he thinks he won’t dream, but he will.

He thinks dreams happen in memory: he thinks you get to choose your bricks out of what you can see, thinks you can arbitrary put up walls and just leave them there forever.

He thinks he only ever has nightmares anyway, thinks that he’d rather not name the discomfort, the fear, the loss: thinks he might call it what it isn’t and go forward.

Jon is twelve years old and he is dreaming a good dream he won’t remember.

There is a dog in front of him, and it is big and disproportionate. She can’t walk properly and she stutters, she stumbles, she falls. Jon doesn’t much like dogs, but he calls her Rose and lets her move around him, staring at her limbs, her fur, her big ears— shiny and pointed outwards.

There are no threats to be seen but still she walks wearily, slowly and in circles, and so close to his body that he can feel hers brushing against his skin.

In the real world, Jon’s blanket is soft. He is sleeping on his back and without a pillow, and his hands are clutching at the fabric. He is tensed and thirsty (can never remember to bring a bottle of water to his room) and there’s a half-finished book under his bed. It’s one he likes.

_What do you want_ , Jon thinks, and he mumbles it with his lips, too. _What do you want?_

The dog stops and looks up at him. She makes one step and collapses on top of his legs.

She is warm. Jon curls himself over her body, tries to see if she’s hurt, and she is. He just doesn’t know what he is supposed to do about it.

Gently, he begins to stroke her fur.

As she breathes and softens under his fingers, Jon lets go of the blanket.

He slips his arms under the duvets, tucks them against his chest, feels Rose’s weight press on him from inside his dreams.

In the morning he won’t remember. Jon doesn’t dream.

Still— he wakes up rested.

* * *

Sasha lingers on the door. Jon’s office is dark and cold, but for a moment too long, she stays. 

These days aren’t easy on anyone. Jon is scared something might happen— to Martin, to him, to Tim, to Sasha. To the Institute. The air feels heavy, weighed down by the past, marked in ways Jon can’t guess. Perhaps it will go away, the fog will clear and this will be nothing more than a weird parenthesis in a lifelong progression. Perhaps this is inevitably going to turn into a distorted story, one that gets gradually bent by time, one that stays broken until it simply has to make sense. 

Perhaps, Jon will not be so lucky. Right now, there’s no way to tell. 

Sasha is looking at him. She is wearing a red blouse. It isn’t meant to be elegant, but she still makes it seem gracious. 

“I saw a movie yesterday,” she says, seemingly out of the blue.

Jon lets go of a tape recorder and squints. “What?” 

“I saw a movie yesterday,” she repeats. “I liked it.” 

If there’s a joke to get, Jon can’t find it. He must look confused, because Sasha walks back into the room and sits down. “It doesn’t mean anything. I just- I was at home, watching this movie alone, and I realised midway that I really liked it. It was simply a good movie, no complications.”

Despite everything, Sasha's eyes are tired. Jon can’t help but feel like there’s an expiration date on whatever this is. 

The universe itself has an expiration date, though, so there’s no need to make an entire philosophy out of a fleeting sense of dread. Not today, at least. It wouldn’t help anyone. 

“Our taste in movies famously does not align,” he says, if only to make her laugh. She does.

“Well, I think you’d like this one.” 

“Maybe I would." It’s a baseless assumption, but, surprisingly, he believes it. 

Sasha moves a bit closer, rests her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands. Her face is framed by painted nails, red earrings and familiar locks of hair.

“Do you want to come to mine, tomorrow afternoon? Tim and Martin are coming as well. We could rewatch it together.” 

Jon wants to ask _What’s the plot of the movie?_ and, follow up question, _are you okay?_

He wants to help, wants to solve things before they can crack open. He doesn’t think he knows how to. 

“Sure,” he says, instead. It comes out gentle, but sincere—it comes out like gentleness can be sincere, even if it doesn’t always last. 

Sasha nods slowly. “Alright. Thank you, Jon.” 

“See you tomorrow, then?” 

"See you tomorrow," she declares, and then, finally, smiles. Bright and unapologetic. 

_Especially_ now, _especially_ here, Jon can't help but smile back. 

* * *

Jon is coming home from the Institute, although the scenery only ever matters when he has control over what he is thinking (which, recently, is never) and the bus is pretty crowded.

Someone bumps into him when the driver makes a sharp turn, and Jon doesn’t even register it. Gertrude Robinson keeps dying from the inside of his head, and Jon says _don’t worry_ when the young man apologises. Her body rots into an empty room, her assassinator walks behind him every day, hands him cases and calls him by name, and Jon has trouble remembering when he is supposed to get out of the vehicle.

He has a broken clock on his wrist, and a big scarf that doesn’t match the weather.

His eyes are stuck somewhere indiscriminate, and he truly looks, truly sees, only when the child starts laughing. They have a good laugh, predictably contagious, and the sound shakes through the people who listen, through those who catch the moment.

Jon follows the child’s gaze, looks where they are looking, and at the other end, past the chaos of bodies and sweat and barely contained swear words, there’s a second child— blushing and laughing back.

Jon can’t tell if they knew each other beforehand.

The parents don’t seem to, at least, and the children don’t make a move, don’t shout a name. They stare at each other and laugh, laugh, laugh.

For a moment, Jon wakes up. He smiles, and his blood is red, his skin young and calloused, his hair long, his fingers elegant and precise.

Those two children are gonna grow up, and they are going to forget this encounter ever happened— they’re going to have really intense make-out sessions in a far-off campus— they are going to be the best man at each other’s wedding— they are going to hate each other, and for good reasons— they are going to work together, but only for a little while— they are going to meet three other times: one in an airport, another in a bathroom, the last in a hospital— they are going to die together in a car accident in about seven years from now— they are going to wear similar styles, and one of them will write poems, the other songs, and they will make art about the same topics and never know that the other person is still alive, was ever alive— and they may be terrible people, they may insensible, they may own several houses or have trouble paying their rent every single month of every single year, forever. They may smile a lot, they may be terrified and traumatized and shallow and helpless.

Right now, though, they are laughing.

When the bus stops, three roads down, and the parents and the children get out together, one after the other, Jon knows it’s a coincidence, but the blood in his veins keeps pumping, and he has hands now.

So he takes out his phone and opens the ostensibly empty notes app: _supplemental_ , he writes _, it is seven pm, and there are far too many people to assume that all of them are deadly scared._

He is about to close it and look up, but then he stops himself. _I saw two children today_ , he adds.

_They looked happy._

* * *

Two fingers close around Jon’s wrist. It is a swift, natural motion, and Jon imagines a red crayon, tracing a line over a blank piece of paper. When the other three fingers come, resting softly over his palm, the crayon shifts. It flattens against the surface and drags itself forward.

Next, there’s a voice.

“Jon,” it says, and suddenly the paper and the crayon disappear from Jon’s mind. In their place, Jon imagines rays of sunlight shining through yellow curtains. Someone’s hand is keeping the window open.

“Look at that,” the voice says, and when Jon finally does, there’s no more space for metaphors.

Martin’s face comes into focus, and his eyes are blue.

“Not _at me_ ,” Martin says, laughing incredulously, and Jon can only look harder. Read the shape of Martin’s lips, name the colour of his skin, draw in his memory something resembling his eyebrows.

Martin Blackwood, _nothing but delays_.

“Jon, are you even listening?”

Jon shakes his head, takes a step forward. He sinks into Martin’s body, and tries to close the door behind him.

There’s someone he is supposed to be, something he is supposed to do, a monster or two he should have killed long ago, and then there’s his skeleton, fragile and overused. He thinks of the bones, feels them pressed against skin and fabric, and for once Jon wants nothing more.

Just a body— belonging to him.

Martin brings his hands up to Jon’s hair, and takes off the tie.

“I am telling you, you should keep them down,” he whispers, reassuringly as though what he meant was _everything is going to be okay_ , but he didn’t want to lie.

Jon moves back only by a couple of inches, and Martin’s fingers are still laced through his hair. He takes out one hand, and points at the sky. “Look,” he says.

Past Martin’s face, past the curtains and the crayon, there’s a sunset.

Jon stares at stares, and it is, all the time, beautiful.

There’s a moment, however, shortly before they come back inside the house, that it becomes more: for that singular moment, it is enough.

Jon is only bones and lungs, he is only skin and heart, and it is enough.

* * *

Tim slams a document on Jon’s desk.

It is the last research he will ever do, and Jon didn’t even ask him to do it.

“It fell,” Tim says, cold, and Jon frowns.

“What?”

“It fell- you were carrying a pile of documents to your desk the other day. That one fell.”

Jon nods, weary, waiting for Tim to- scream, maybe, perhaps just leave in silence, but he does neither. He stays there, perfectly still, his fists red for how strongly he is pushing the nails into his skin.

“Tim, is there—“

“You misspelled the name.”

Jon opens his mouth. Closes it, starts over. “I did what?”

“You misspelled the name of the person who gave the statement.”

“Okay,” Jon says, and he is horrified by the tone of his own voice. It is kind, too kind, dangerously close to pleading. “Thank you,” he adds, trying to correct himself, but it only sounds worse.

Tim swallows, and Jon is stuck looking at his Adam’s apple. At his chest, inflating and deflating erratically.

“Yeah, boss,” Tim says, and it doesn’t sound as dry as it would have one hour ago. It’s still unmistakably ironic (and it’s not the good kind of irony) but there’s something more. Some imitation of what his voice once was, that overlaps with Tim’s anger. It is dissonant and it is _unbearable_ , but Jon takes his time to absorb it. Feels the cacophony of Tim’s voice, struggling to say _don’t mention it_ , and waits for it to burn into his lungs and bring out a shadow of a smile on his face.

“How- how do you know I was the one to write that down?” Jon asks. He hasn’t exactly been compiling documents, lately, or even taking notes at all. The Eye does it for him. He has tried to come back to his old, outdated version of normal, to pieces of paper and pens, but it felt pointless. Only served to make him tired.

Tim smiles. It is a bitter smile, and it is full of melancholy.

“It’s your calligraphy,” he says, simply, and then turns and walks away.

On the document, at the very centre, there’s a box. It says _statement of_ printed black in ink.

Beside it, Jon’s messy, disorganized calligraphy: _Kaya James._

In between the _a_ and the _y_ , a small, neat, blue line, pointing upwards. At the end of the line: _i_.

A post-it is stuck right on the top right corner of the paper. _Kaiya_ , it says, _not Kaya._

Kaiya James is no one important. Jon remembers her statement— in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t useful to him then, and it isn’t now.

Jon brushes his hands on the ink, the blue and the black leaving no trace on his fingerprints as he goes over the letters. He doesn't move the statement, doesn't put it away. He just leaves it there, abandoned on his desk. 

If Tim ever notices, he doesn't bring it up. 

* * *

“How did you two get together?” 

Jon sighs in exasperation, bracing himself for what’s to come, and Erin smiles at him, mischievous and playful and never out of line. 

“Well, I am glad you asked,” Georgie says,

“Haven’t we _already_ told this story, about a thousand times over?” 

From the other side of the table, Aza brings her feet up on the chair, the leftovers of her dinner now fully abandoned. “Yes, you did, and I cannot wait to hear it again.”

“Is it _that_ funny?” 

She shrugs. “Sort of. Best part is your expressions, to be entirely honest.” 

Georgie wraps an arm around Jon’s shoulders, holds him close and looks at him. “It is, right? He just cannot control them.” 

“Don’t patronize me,” Jon says, and he is trying—sincerely trying, and _very_ hard—not to smile. If he then spectacularly fails, well. That’s nobody’s business. 

“I am not, Jon. You are just cute.”

“Thanks, I am going to throw myself into the sea.” 

Erin laughs. “You are such a drama queen, oh my god.” 

“I hate all of you.”

“You absolutely do not,” Billy comments, eyebrows raised, as he comes into the kitchen, playing in his hand with a yellow ball that he absolutely did not have before getting up to go to the bathroom. 

“Where did you get that?” Aza interjects, and he sits down without answering. 

“What are you guys talking about?”

“Where did you get that, Billy?” 

He turns towards her and rolls his eyes theatrically. “Aza, would you shut up, please? I am in the middle of something.” 

“This is my house. Where do you get that?”

“Why do you care? Let us share the holy communion of your belongings.”

“My belongings are neither holy nor a communion.” 

Georgie laughs and Jon can feel her body shake, pressed against his. She is warm, welcoming, familiar. Unthinkingly, Jon reaches for her hand and intertwines their fingers. She squeezes, just briefly, but the ease of their recognition still manages to amaze him— every day is their first day, precisely because it isn’t. 

He lets himself breathe as Aza and Billy argue about this ugly ball that no one could care less about, both pretending they aren’t just bickering because it’s fun. 

The window is open and the cool evening air blows gently on the curtains. The table is not as full as it usually is (Alok couldn’t make it, he had a thing with his family, and Leila wasn’t feeling well) but the room still feels crowded, what with the ridiculous number of plates stacked in the sink and the paintings hung all over the walls. Jon has always liked those paintings. They look so bright, but it’s not an invasive brightness. It looks _sincere_ , natural. _They are supposed to be this bright_ , he thinks, and finds comfort in the thought, in the idea that some things are meant to be happy, no matter what. 

“Aza,” Billy is saying, in a yet again theatrical attempt at faked-annoyance, “why do you _care_ about this ball I found in the bathroom behind a bunch of unused cosmetics that looked like they were purchased seven centuries ago?” 

“Why _the fuck_ are you looking through my things?”

“Because you ran out of toilet paper and I had to unearth an alternative from your mess.”

“Ah,” she says. “Well, it’s still invasive and I want my ball back.”

“ _And I_ want my heart back, sweet love of mine, but we don’t always get what we want.”

“I never _took_ your heart.

He stops to get into character. Looks down, makes a pained expression. Brings his closed fist to his chest. “But you did keep it.” 

“I am going to fucking kill you.” 

Erin claps her hands once, and then loudly starts proclaiming that _okay, okay, show’s over, I asked a question and deserve an answer, if you could_ please _, for the love of god, shut up._ Eventually, after some more negotiating (the ball eventually ends up in Erin’s costudy) they do shut up, and Georgie has the stage all for herself. 

“Okay, so,” she begins, and Jon can tell from her voice that she is already having fun. “Picture this: Jon and I are studying in my room, and it’s like, winter, and the middle of the night.”

“It was _barely_ midnight,” he clarifies, nitpicky as ever. Georgie rolls her eyes. 

“Yeah, fine, it was. Anyway, we are studying on my bed. We are pretty close friends by now, and we are used to doing these all-nighters for study purposes. Everything is accounted for, everything is going alright. Then, out of the blue, the lights go out. Jon panics.”

“I did not panic.” 

“—he panics, and says: _It’s dark_. To which I reply: _yeah Jon, it is_.”

“I wasn’t panicking, it was just- awkward.” 

“Okay, sure, it was awkward. I mean, we were already used to each other, so it wasn’t supposed to be so tensed-”

“It’s that you made a joke as the light went out, so it basically caught us laughing. It was an odd moment. I am sure we could have found a way to light up the room without electricity, we just didn’t try.” 

Erin, Aza and Billy all whisper some variation of _that's cute_ , and Jon feels warmth rush to hir ears. Being the centre of attention can be awful, sure, but it all depends on who is looking. Jon likes this crowd. 

“I wanted to somehow fill the silence,” Georgie says, seemingly unbothered by their comments, “so I started telling him this, like- anecdote from my childhood. I had a cousin I spent a lot of time with, and we used to play this game in the dark. We would write a secret on a piece of paper, and then get into a dark room, sit down, and hold it up to the other person. At that point, we had to guess what it said. Based on her theory, do it enough times and you’ll develop mind powers.” 

“So, like a perfect idiot, I said _let’s try it_.” 

“Oh no,” Erin whispers. Aza and Billy, who know the story, are already smiling.

“And I’m thinking _oh, that’s fun, I am gonna write something silly._ I take out two pages from my notebook and give him a pencil, and we both start writing in the dark. For the entire time, I could see that he was- weirdly anxious?”

If Jon thinks back to it, he can still remember how fast his heart was beating, how sappy it all felt. “I sure was,” he says, and Billy laughs. 

“Well, let’s just say that eventually we are holding up these pages in near darkness, and I am basically doing all the talking. I make these either really wild or really boring guesses, and he is just, nervously... giggling or something. Then he starts saying _you know what, let’s fold and exchange these, so that when we are alone we can read them._ He seemed serious about it, and I remember thinking that perhaps I had misread the situation. But then, just as quickly as it went out, the light came back. And so I look at his paper-”

Jon launches forward, and untangles his hands from Georgie’s so he can use it to shush her. “No, no, let _me_ tell this part.”

Graciously, Georgie raises her arms and lets him.

“I am, clearly, trying to do something here. Imagine me, _me_ in that situation. The room lights up again. I look at her paper, and it says _you are a theatre kid_. Mine says _I have feelings for you_. Georgie starts laughing.” 

Georgie’s laughing now, too. Everyone is laughing, really. 

“You _are_ a theatre kid, though. That isn’t even a secret,” Billy says, and Jon sighs.

“Not the point, please be respectful here. I have never felt more embarrassed in my life. She was _laughing_.”

“Yeah, Jon, because it was funny. I mean, not your declaration, just the contrast between _that_ and me telling you that you are a theatre kid. ” 

“You are unjustifiable. You tried to fix it by repeating the word _same_ through the giggles.” 

“I _did_ have feelings for you!”

“Well, you could have certainly found a better way to express it than just saying _same_.” 

She takes his hand again. “We had lots of time for that.” 

Jon sighs, content despite everything, and falls back against the char. “I guess we did.” 

“All’s well that ends well,” Aza comments, and, well- it really is. There’s this residual glee in the air, this autumnal taste of new beginnings that can only bloom when the trees start losing their leaves. 

As Billy launches into mortifying, minute descriptions of Jon and Georgie’s first meeting, Jon thinks that there’s probably some ice-cream left in the freezer. He asks Aza about it, and she takes it out as Billy is still talking. 

Jon is not hungry, per se, but today is a sweet day— there’s no need to hold back. 

* * *

The rain falls heavy from the sky, and it is relentless and it is inconsiderate.

Jon looks up and blames a god he doesn’t think exists.

He doesn’t ask them to stop the water from crashing on his skin, doesn’t curse or plead: he looks up and blames. All in all, it’s more of an experiment than a genuine instinct. He wants to know if this can make it better— but of course it can’t.

Did Atlas ever try to push back the Heavens? Of course not. Of course he couldn’t.

And so Jon sticks with his soaked clothes, and he sticks with his good share of responsibility, sticks with the Knowledge and the mistakes and all the horrible tales, and for once in a long time, he heads home.

The streets are mostly empty, and it is hard not to do drift away. Jon tries to focus on the road, on the few lights he sees, but his mind keeps circling back to terror.

Part of him wishes the water could just melt him away, reduce him to a weightless puddle. No recognition, no conscience. It can still be him, just a version of Jonathan Sims that breaks under pressure, one that can finally let go.

When he stumbles, feels his legs give in under his weight, he almost doesn’t react. His arms fly up to protect his body, and Jon closes his eyes and doesn’t know what he should hope for.

The pavement is rough under his knees, the palm of his hands, and he is- drained. Empty, resourceless, and yet stuck, too alive for his own good. Too alive to enjoy it.

It’s like he isn’t fit for joy anymore, like the- _thing_ he is turning into rejects what Jon calls home. Sometimes, he fears he has lost a concept of “home” altogether.

It must say something about Jon’s humanity, however, that when a gentle hand lands on his shoulder, he immediately screams, taken aback. He turns around to see a tall, familiar man, jumping back and saying _sorry! sorry, Jon. did not mean- sorry_.

Martin does not have an umbrella. He looks tired and his hair is entirely soaked— the long curls, weighted down by the water, brush his shoulders when he speaks.

 _He doesn’t deserve this_ , Jon thinks, abruptly, and it is too late to smile. His heart rate quiets down quickly, calmed by Martin’s presence, and Jon stares, fearing himself voiceless, wishing he were. Wishing he had an excuse to shut down.

Martin reaches out, and Jon takes his hand without thinking too much about it, moved by an instinct he can’t afford to disregard.

“Are you okay?” Martin asks, concerned, and Jon thinks _your hand is warm_. But the hand is gone sooner than expected, and suddenly he is not lying on the pavement anymore and all that is left to do is nod. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“You didn’t take an umbrella.”

“Neither did you.”

“We are both idiots, then.”

Martin tries to smile. Looks up at the rain, shrugs. “I guess.”

For an instant, Jon wonders what Martin truly thinks of him. It is a simple question, and it might have felt more pressing if their situation had been entirely different, but it is still important.

Jon feels his cheeks redden. It is absurd that they still can.

“Well, then,” Martin says, “I supposed we should-”

“Can’t we walk together? Until our roads diverge, so to speak.”

Martin’s eyes widen. He looks surprised, like this wasn’t in his plans. Like he knows how to deal with storms and tragedy, but not with Jon asking him to spend ten minutes by his side.

“Yeah,” he says, still, sounding awkward but content. “Sure.”

Jon offers him a smile, and Martin seems to take it. He extends his right arm and gestures to the road.

The rain envelops them from above and the wind closes off the sides. They see each other from the cracks, and even then, Martin's glasses are full of raindrops. 

The moon lights them up only in halves, but it is still light, and all in all, it isn't too cold to breathe.

There isn't too much room to try, but they make it. 

The moment is fleeting, and it lasts. 

* * *

“Sasha, for the love of God, _please_ help me.”

Jon is kneeling on the ground, looking absolutely distraught, and Sasha is standing in front of him, laughing like there’s no tomorrow.

“This is not funny,” he says, hands rummaging around in the grass. “You are being immensely unhelpful right now.”

“ _Immensely unhelpful_ ,” she repeats, mockingly, and Jon’s gaze shoots up to hers.

“I hate you.”

She rolls her eyes, unimpressed. “At least you’ll get a funny story out of this.”

“Oh, I cannot _wait_ to tell all our coworkers about that one time I spent hours looking for my house keys in a pub’s weird garden while Sasha James stared at me.”

“Jon, you have been here five minutes tops.”

“ _That_ is not the point.”

Around them, it’s winter. The sky is starless tonight, closed off— unbothered by humanity’s goings-on, whatever they might be. People are mostly chatting inside, getting drunk or trying to feel happy over something that isn’t actually that great.

Sasha is wearing a big blue coat, and it suits her. Carefully, so as not to ruin it too much, she crouches in front of Jon and smiles theatrically, in a pretend attempt at comfort that soothes him despite its job description.

“Jon. I saw you drop the keys.”

“Yes, you did, which is why you should-”

“Which is _why_ I am sure nobody stole them. We are gonna find them.”

“No, _I_ am gonna find them, by the looks of it.”

Sasha bits her lip, clearly suppressing a smile, and Jon sighs.

“What?”

“All it takes is one beer, and you become _so_ annoying.”

“Well then, do hope that I will fully regain my self-control when I am sober, otherwise I am going to be angry about this, forever.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Do you _really_ think this is worth an eternal grudge? I may do something more extreme one day.”

Jon opens his mouth in shock. He is wildly exaggerating this. They both can tell.

“Oh, is this a challenge now?”

Sasha laughs.

“Is this a challenge?” he repeats, with more emphasis now, but the effort is lost when he smiles. “You know, I can remember many things at once.”

“I see, I see. And this is your bar? Everything above it is eligible for unforgettable crime?”

“Why not? I do have a strong memory, might as well put it to good use.”

She looks at him, and there is recognition in her eyes, some kind of intimacy that cannot escape his notice, that Jon chooses to take into account. 

“Fine," she says. "I will help you find the key to your crappy apartment.”

Jon frowns. “Hey, you don't know if it's crappy. You haven’t even seen it.”

“And yet,” she says, all cocky, and he keeps himself from replying exclusively because he doesn’t want to waste any time that could be spent finding his goddamn keys.

When finally, _finally_ it seems that Sasha may be about to join him in his search, Jon sees a figure standing behind her. He jumps, and Sasha just looks at him, baffled, until she feels two arms coming around her middle, and a familiar voice saying _how are you doing, party people?_

Sasha shuts her eyes and raises her hands. “Tim,” she says, very slowly, “what the fuck.”

“Sorry guys, thought you heard me coming.”

“You did not,” Jon replies, deadpan, and Tim levels the concept in his head, turns it slightly to the left, then to the right.

“That’s- a possibility.”

“Shut up,” Sasha says, jokingly, and that seems to convince him she must not be too angry, because he fully sits down behind her and settles himself around her body, hugging her tightly. Jon can tell Tim, too, is a little tipsy— he knows he wouldn’t do that in the daylight.

Sasha immediately relaxes, leans back against him with ease.

“It was getting boring inside,” Tim whispers, and he looks almost blissful. Jon doesn't comment on it only because he is a decent person, thank you very much, and doesn’t mean to disrupt the view.

“He is has lost his house keys,” Sasha says, pointing at Jon, and Tim bursts out laughing.

Jon sighs. He tries to come up with a way to bring everyone back to their senses and help him find the key to his house, so that he literally has a place to sleep tonight, but in the meantime Sasha goes _I did that, too, and he got mad_ and Tim stares at Jon up and down as though this was just hilarious, and it simply seems like an incommensurable task.

“ _Please_ ,” Jon repeats, unable to conjure a more complex plead, and miraculously Tim nods.

“Fine, we’ll help you look for your keys. Don’t know why you are so pressed about it.”

“Aside from the fact that I am a responsible adult and I have no intention of leaving my keys laying around outside of a pub, of all places, how else am I gonna get into my apartment?”

“Don’t you have a spare key, somewhere?”

“I- mh.” Jon pauses, thinks about what he is going to say, asks himself if such a thing is too awkward to share with your colleagues. Eventually, he concludes that it should be fine. They are out drinking, after all. It’s a fun night. They are friends— sort of. “I don’t know anyone I could give it to.”

“Oh Jon, but you could have given it to us!” Tim says, earnest, if a bit too cheesy in the delivery, and Jon feels genuinely warmed by that.

"Thank you," he replies, and then, without premise, rhyme or reason, two fingers cross the space between Jon and his friends, and pinch his nose. 

Jon pushes Sasha's hand away before she can get too proud of her accomplishment, but still, he smiles.

“Fine, fine, stop- doing whatever you are doing. I can give one of you a spare key if you are so keen on it, but first I have to find mine. Would you _please_ cooperate?”

Tim and Sasha look at each other conspiratorially, and then Sasha turns towards Jon. “Just this once, we may.”

Jon is still smiling.

“The council has decided, then.”

“It has. Please don’t question it too much or we may change our minds.”

He zips his lips with his fingers and gestures at the ground. _Can we start?_

  
One hour and a half later and they have found: two cheap rings, a pen cap, two pounds, and, finally, Jon’s keys.  
They could have taken less time, mind you, if Tim had just _stopped_ making a joke every ten seconds and Sasha and Jon had done a better job pretending not to enjoy it, but still. Jon is able to get into his own home, and he even finds a way to fall asleep peacefully.

It’s a good result.

No matter the time— they can still be proud of that.

* * *

It’s New Year’s eve, and Jon is fifteen.

He is lying down in the back garden of someone else’s house, and an awful lot of people are lying there as well— in a way (in a quite literal way), they are lying beside him.

Jon doesn’t particularly like it, but he is trying. He breathes deeply and attempts to let go of the residual worry, the sense of dismay that forces him to call himself amiss.

  
When he looks up at the night, though fireworks are long since gone, he sees a bright spark falling from the sky in the distance. “What is that?” he asks, and nobody listens.

“What is that?” he asks again, louder, and a voice from behind him laughs.

“I don’t know,” they say. “It looks like a falling star.”

The voice is kind. Jon imagines it as if they are friends.

He is too tired to tie a voice with a body, so he cannot tell who that person is, not even distantly, but Jon is sure they must be nice. He is sure they _could_ have been friends, if things had gone a little differently. He is sure they could still be.

  
“You think so?” Jon asks.

“Yeah. Well— maybe it’s a plane. I don’t know.”

“Can’t it just be a falling star, for once?”

The person laughs again, and it’s really nice to hear.

For a while, no one around them exists. All the people who insisted of this stupid star-watching business, all of them gone.

“We can make a wish, then.”

“Sure,” says the voice.

Jon closes his eyes, and he is too scared for long-term expectations.

 _I hope I like_ _tomorrow_ , he thinks. 

Behind him, the stranger moves. Sits up, Jon guesses.

"Did you do it?” 

Jon smiles and wonders if _they_ can see _him_. If they think anything of the way he looks. It’s nothing important, nothing life-changing, but he is curious.

“I did,” he says, and then turns around to finally see who he is talking to.

It happens quickly— he is lying on the grass, staring at nothing, and then he is leaning on his hands, twisting his torso to look behind.

He locks eyes with a stranger dressed in violet and black, and the stranger is smiling at him.

The moments stretches, and the stranger’s eyes are big and beautiful. Jon doesn’t do much about it, but he notices.

"I hope your wish comes true," Jon whispers. 

"Thank you. I am sure yours will come true as well." 

Perhaps it's the gentleness of the reciprocation, perhaps it's that they are three hours into a whole new year, but Jon pushes himself a little further. "What if it doesn't?" 

The stranger shrugs. "You can always make another wish next time. One of them _has_ to come true." 

"You think so?"

"I like to, yeah." 

For that one second, Jon feels happy. For that one second, tomorrow is the brightest day Jon can imagine. For that one second, the present belongs to them.

And it feels good. It feels _so_ good. 

* * *

It doesn’t matter what day it is. Doesn’t matter where they are.

Jon travels in time, can move freely in the space around them. Where there’s terror, then there is Jon, looking in, looking into, looking for.

Martin comes into the room, and Jon Knows it before he hears the knocks. It feels good that it can, it hurts and the pain enriches the fire that burns him from the inside.

Jon waits for him to come sit beside him.

“How are you?” Martin asks, and Jon expects it.

He answers as best as he can, and then closes his eyes and waits.

Martin raises his hands, and Jon Knows this. But then, by magic, maybe, or perhaps by the exact opposite, perhaps specifically because they are still, somehow, so profoundly human, Jon cannot tell where the hands will land.

It is a cheesy question and it is one that Jon longs for every day. Martin’s decision is pivotal, and he takes his time making it.

When Jon least expects it— it comes. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you are still confused as to why I said that this fic is based on a poem, maybe reread the poem now. it will hopefully make sense. 
> 
> "The ones we choose and never name are ours as long as we look", from the first scene, is,,,, based on another Wislawa Szymborska poem that goes: "All is mine but nothing owned, there is no property for the memory, it is mine only while I look."
> 
> in the scene where Martin and Jon look at the sunset, the last sentences are heavily based on this quote by Toni Morrison: “At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
> 
> Also, Tim and Jon's statement: I meant to choose one I found significant from the canon, but I couldn't find anything that I liked and fit the timeline, so I just googled "name that means forgiveness" and then paired it with Sasha's surname,,,, I hate myself a bit.
> 
> Oh, and that thing with the children laughing at each other on a bus. that really happened to me. I was having a terrible day, and I was on a bus and these two kids started smiling at each other. they were smaller than I made it out to be in the fic, but it was so beautiful and I couldn't!! for the life of me!!! tell whether the parents knew each other. they were both smiling but they weren't like standing close or anything. and then the bus stop and all four of them got out and I tried to see if they were going in the same direction but the autobus was too fast, I couldn't see. I think I like it better that way. 
> 
> anyway, thank you so much for reading, hope you liked this.  
> I am [mxrspider](https://mxrspider.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, if you ever want to come screaming about tma 🌸


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